Talent acquisition functions are quickly evolving their talent practices to reflect an increasingly complex recruiting and hiring landscape. This 48-page report includes insights from over 600 staffing leaders from over a dozen industries on the challenges they face. A few insights: 1) Sixty-six percent of respondents said that time to fill is the most critical performance metric to watch in the next 12 months, followed by cost-per-hire and redeployment rate. 2) Recruitment team sizes have remained more or less the same despite increased talent demand in several industries. 3) Increased pressure on recruiters has affected their response times to new leads, as respondents say that their recruiters take over 6 hours to respond to new leads; that said, the report doesn’t mention a benchmark of best in class recruiting functions. 4) Recruiters report spending up to 50% of their time on manual/repetitive tasks. 5) Regarding candidates dropping out of the process from job offer to job start, 44% of recruiters say 1 in 5 candidates drop out. While various solutions may need to be employed to overcome these challenges, AI and automation are likely to be one of them. Other ideas are discussed.